


break this curse

by rhodenia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Dancestors - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Heir of Doom powers, Post-Scratch, Psychic Abilities, Suicidal Thoughts, Universe A, black Helmsman/Condesce, but it's not really about the romance cause it's literally like one kiss, post-scratch A1 kids, rating is high to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 21:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodenia/pseuds/rhodenia
Summary: The first time she ever touches him, when he is bound so tightly within the wood that splinters into his broken flesh, he screams.She is the one that steals life, but the true cruelty was stealing his death.





	break this curse

**Author's Note:**

> The characters have the same names as their pre-scratch counterparts, because I figured that their lusii would give them the same names regardless of the date. 
> 
> Also this kinda sucks and I've never really written for HS before so let's see

 

The tendrils of her flagship do not hurt anymore, for he and the flagship have become one. Who even is _he,_ anymore, Mituna wonders- every part of him is so interwoven with the Condesce that the presence of his own identity seems to rise and fall with the warping of space. His body is her ship’s body. His lifespan is _her_ lifespan, his death is _her_ death.

  _Heir of Doom,_ the Signless once called him, another lifetime worth of pain in his eyes.

Now he can feel it, feel the destruction he is flying into. It is a force that presses against his temples as the visions shake him- columns of fire that rise from his planet as meteors tear into the surface. As the Condesce shrieks her command to go faster, her voice is tinged with a fervent desperation, an enraged denial. He wishes he could tell her that Alternia is doomed regardless of if he manages this feat or not, but she stopped acknowledging his voice a long, long time ago.

…

The first time she ever touches him, when he is bound so tightly within the wood that splinters into his broken flesh, he screams.

 He had been on the brink of death, he had seen the darkness approaching so swiftly and surely to take away the agony. He had always been able to sense disaster, it had hung as a heavy mist around him even when he had been a mere crusading rebel. When the exhaustion had finally settled deep into his bones and the press of death that had always surrounded him seemed to merge itself into him, he sagged with relief as the battle between he and doom drew to a close.

But then he feels her touch, and even worse, he feels the decision behind it. The darkness curls itself out of his skin, and it feels as if his flesh is being ripped off. _No, no, no,_ he thinks, in far too much pain to voice his protestations. _This is wrong._

Death claws towards him as she drags it away, but its efforts are futile. Mituna watches as she chokes the very nature of the universe, bending it to her will. The will of a conqueror, the will of an empress.

He watches as she steals his only chance of escape.

When it is over, he sinks his head in shame, in deference, in resignation. If his life was not hers before, it is now.

She hovers in front of him now, black lips stretched wide in a cold smile. She brushes her fingers across his quivering cheek, touching the skin where his tears have dried.

 _Why,_ he asks with his eyes. The doom clings to her skin as it always does, becoming not just a haze, but a smoke that stings his throat when he breathes. Her presence _does something_ to him, something that she loves. He can see it written in the way she draws herself over him, as if she is simply exalted by the idea of being his poison.

“These lowbloods perish so quickly,” she croons, drawing herself closer. Her voice scratches in the worst places, it scrapes his ears horribly. He can only think of how Meulin was once deaf in her other life, he can only think of how much he wishes he could be deaf too. “My soldiers toss more carp-ses from this ship each sea-son.”

Mituna shudders. She is not lying, he sees them falling sometimes, bodies broken and bleeding. Sometimes they are not yet dead. Sometimes they shout, sometimes they plead. _Help,_ they yell, _someone help me._  And he will think about plunging the ship downwards, but he cannot do it. It still controls him somehow, prying his energy from his writhing form.

“I remember you, Helmsman,” she whispers, a new ferocity underpinning the saccharine tone. “You were there when _he_ was strung up in chains, when that disgusting blood of his was fin-ally on display for all of them to see.” Her smirk cuts through him. “I should keep somefin… somefin to remember that day. The best rebellion I ever _crushed._ ”

When she says the last word, she wraps her fingers around the back of his neck and pulls herself even closer. He stiffens, his skin burns with the proximity. In his mind he sees blisters sprouting wherever she touches his skin, sees blood running like needles have pricked him. But when he looks, he sees nothing. He is so painfully aware of how the wood pins his arms above his head, how it grips his torso in place.

Her fangs glisten in the starlight when she kisses him.

“I hate you,” she murmurs, her breath searing his skin. Her grip is so tight, he knows there will be bruises once she leaves.

He tilts his head up to look at her, truly look at her. Her eyes glow fuchsia, the color of the relentless quest for blood supremacy.  The color of oppression, of a revolting casual cruelty that rotted away in the deepest reaches of the hallowed cave she called a heart. Had those eyes ever cried, ever shined with remorse?

He knows the answer.

The hands that grip his shoulder, that touch his neck- they are the hands that as good as murdered his best friend. The very hands that shackled his wrists together and became smeared with a bright, candy red she wore as a trophy.

And the rage grows inside him with every moment he looks at her, sees her sins painted so clearly across every part of her, sees a repulsiveness that runs so deep it could never be cured. He sees a soul that carried misery in its touch, a doomed flame that will drag so much innocence into the pit with it before finally extinguishing. He tries to lunge forward, wrap his hands around her throat, but the ship only cuts into his skin harder.

She feels him struggle, but does not move.

Eyes fixed on hers, he speaks at last. “I hate you, too.” He says it with her smoke searing his throat, his eyes stinging, his flesh screaming. There is a growl beneath the words he has never heard on his tongue before. A wretched, solid sincerity. He knows she can hear it.

She boards the flagship eventually, throwing a goodbye over her shoulder.

He’s never had a kismesis before.

…

He thinks about how he could die, if his powers could counteract the Condesce’s somehow. He throws any energy he can manage to scrape up into the pursuit of dragging death back to his own body where it belongs, where it was stolen from him.  He reaches out as far as he can, but can feel nothing. She has extended his life too long, and the space stretches out infinitely in front of him, so vast and empty and cold. An unfeeling void that bears witness to his torture.

Why is Kankri the sufferer, he sometimes wonders, if _Mituna_ is the one that is tortured forever? His wrists will be bound for another thousand sweeps, he knows this as surely as he knows that when the end comes, his corpse will be grafted still to the flagship. He wonders this, and the regret immediately grabs him, wrapping around him like his frozen prison.

Maybe the Condesce cannot hate him more than he hates himself.

…

He supposes a troll can get tired of looking at the stars, the same way an empress can get tired of speaking to a goldblood.

…

_eternity rots in her eyes_

_they could not be deader_

_if he gouged them_

_out of her head_

…

She shrieks at him _faster_ , she shrieks _hurry, hurry, HURRY._ It is a horrible sound, burrowing deep into his ears and staying there. _They’re all gonna die,_ she cries.

He has known for a long time that to be near doomed things means pain. It hurt to be around Kankri or Meulin, it hurts to be near _her_. But when Alternia became close enough to sense, the torture wracks his body. His throat is raw with his own deafening screaming, with the anguish of an entire world dying in fire. He hears her voice again, _no, no, no_ , but not even that can worsen his agony.

He does not know exactly what the future has in store for her, but he senses a fate worse than death. Somehow, even with the horror that engulfs him, he has time to be thankful. Anything he would have given, anything at all, to die all those sweeps ago when the ship had first wound into his limbs. Now she will wish that her death had happened… right now.

Mituna throws everything he has into pushing forward, he swears he can feel his sanity slipping away as his mind twists and dances on the edge of _something_. A psionic mind was never made to do this, but somehow, he knows his will. His death is at the end of this journey, and if he has to wait another moment, it will have been far too long.

…

When he regains consciousness, he allows his eyes to open to near slits. The Condesce hovers near him, mouth agape at the scene. He does not look, for he knows what he will see. Those visions have haunted enough nightmares.

They are here. He has done it.

“H-Helmsman?”

He jerks as she breaks the awful silence, the permeating and transcendent silence of an unspeakable tragedy settling into the air. Her voice is softer than he has ever heard it. That word has not crossed her lips in some time, and she says it haltingly, as if she is not sure if she’s even saying it correctly at all. She thinks he’s dead, he realizes. The Speaker of the Vast Glub has spoken, after all.

He _is_ dying, he can feel that darkness that was once wrestled so violently from his grasp pour into him slowly, serenely. It is a peace he had only dared to dream of in his most delirious moments, when his mind wandered far, far away from the flagship and the empress.

“You know, you were all that was left,” she sighs. “I had four violetbloods with me, and they were all dead by last sweep. Should’ve extended _their_ lives too, but I couldn’t.”

Cold, cold hands touch his face. Mituna resists the urge to frown. They were not cold before. Maybe as his life drains, his power does too- maybe in these final moments, she is not poison anymore.

“Almost nothing left to steal,” she says. There is a beat. A sniffling sound.

It takes everything he has not to suddenly freeze up in shock. He must already be dead- but he knows the darkness is still moving through him. It is not finished yet.

“I will do whatever it takes to save us,” the Condesce declares. “I’ll bring them back. Whatever planet I have to conquer, whichever species must be subdued, whichever despicable path leads to another matriorb, _I will do it._  I promise you, my gold pilot of eternity.” Her hands fall, and he can feel the spots where they used to be.

It is something, but it is not enough.

When the Handmaid appears, crackling with an addictive energy, an overwhelming power, he feels almost nothing.

Almost.

The moment before the Condesce steps into the duel she is fated to lose, Mituna opens his eyes.

“You deserve it, Meenah,” he says, the vile promise corrupting his shallow breath. Her name feels heavy on his tongue, a vague memory from Kankri’s stories. “Whatever she does to you, just know…” he looks up at her through his drooping lashes, and he catches the only shock he has ever seen in those eyes. “You deserve it.”

When she finally disappears, when his body and the darkness finally become one, there is a hush like an exhale. As the first crackle breaks the dead silence, lighting the tomb of his fallen race, something twines itself in his spine and he slumps in his bounds. He hears a faraway rush, growing closer like a ship flying into the horizon.

 It sounds like freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> uh yeah sorry you had to read that! I do love comments, so please leave one if you'd like!


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